S3 at it again...

[merlocka]

with more of the same.

They announce the SavageXP (and AlphaChrome) devices some time ago, I was waiting to see how they faired under the wings of VIA. They have a roadmap to a part called Columbia which (if released soon) could be compeditive on paper.

Tyan and Gigabyte were ready to make cards with the SavageXP chip as a entry-level (read : very low cost) card.

Looks like S3 has delayed Zeotrope core (SavageXP) and respun the silicon. Why? Stability issues. Columbia has been pushed into Q203.

In this high-tech graphics industry it's good to know some things don't change... S3 dissapoints.

Regards,

Your Anandtech S3 fanboy

 

[vss1980]

I have little love for S3 or S3 Graphics as things are now, but for once they have done the right thing. Rather than release a product with buggy hardware as well as dodgy drivers they have decided to fix things first. I mean, no point having it the same as the Savage4 and in some cases the Savage2000 where the hardware would need to be in AGP 1x to work properly or have to turn of sidebanding or something.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: vss1980
I have little love for S3 or S3 Graphics as things are now, but for once they have done the right thing. Rather than release a product with buggy hardware as well as dodgy drivers they have decided to fix things first. I mean, no point having it the same as the Savage4 and in some cases the Savage2000 where the hardware would need to be in AGP 1x to work properly or have to turn of sidebanding or something.

Well, I don't think they had the option to release it as it stands. Spinning the part to fix problems OK if they can add performance at the same time, but I'm not sure with S3.

This part (baically a 4 pipline DX7 part with some DX8 features) could have undercut the Geforce4 MX line if it was release 6 months ago, but if it's not out until the fall/winter... Xabre , Radeon 9000, Geforce4 MX... these cards are priced quite low and will offer better performance.

There's not much market left, in a market which is getting tighter each day.

 

[aswedc]

Ok S3 fanboy So the silicon is being "respun", what exactly does that mean? Will it still be released? When?

 

[vss1980]

'Respun' as in 'has a few things that dont work right in the circuit so they have to change the design slightly and make some new test chips'.

Personally I am amazed and disappointed that this is the case. I mean, before S3 sold out to the joint venture we already knew they had plans for a revised Savage2000 with DDR memory (possibly would have been called Savage2000+ with the card called ViperII Z400 - but who cares its a long gone idea now) and better T&L unit (not as in DX8, but one that actually worked correctly) and basically this is what the Zeotrope is (or SavageXP as its called) with maybe a couple more small additions.
The fact that they are having problems with the designs now means either that the designs that S3 had before were so very pitiful or VIA has fudged it up in some way.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: vss1980
'Respun' as in 'has a few things that dont work right in the circuit so they have to change the design slightly and make some new test chips'.

Personally I am amazed and disappointed that this is the case. I mean, before S3 sold out to the joint venture we already knew they had plans for a revised Savage2000 with DDR memory (possibly would have been called Savage2000+ with the card called ViperII Z400 - but who cares its a long gone idea now) and better T&L unit (not as in DX8, but one that actually worked correctly) and basically this is what the Zeotrope is (or SavageXP as its called) with maybe a couple more small additions.
The fact that they are having problems with the designs now means either that the designs that S3 had before were so very pitiful or VIA has fudged it up in some way.

Agreed 100%.

FYI, I don't have any hard facts on the details of the respin. A couple emails with people is about it.

In addition, S3's own data show's the performance somewhere between an ATI Radeon 32 DDR and a Geforce2 GTS. Not bad, but if it were released *today* it would get dusty on shelves if it were priced higher than $70

 

[ViRGE]

The Savage design, for a lack of a better term, has been pathetic for its entire lifetime. The Savage 3D worked well enough(it had bad drivers, and the card only had 8MB of RAM, but the core rendering components were good), but the minute that anyone tried to add/tweek anything on the core, it all went downhill. The S4 managed to marginally bust a few things, and the changes made for the S2K absolutely trashed the core as a whole with a non-functional T&L unit. I know this won't happen any time soon, but S3 needs to head back to the drawing board, and design a core from the ground up. If they lay a solid base for themselves, they can easily compete with the Trident XP4, and even break in to the GF4 MX / Raedon 9000 segment. Heck, who knows, if S3 really put itself to the task, I think they are the 3rd best company behind Nvidia and ATI to really move to the high-end(S3 already has some Z sorting techniques; I don't expect Matrox to develop the tech any time soon).

 

[TourGuide]

Back in the day when people were crazy about 2D performance, S3 made a graphics chip that was in just about every OEM design known to man. Anyone remember the 968 chips? At that time, the graphics chips they designed and produced were a pretty fair mainstream product. The drivers were resonably stable and aside from some minor hardware flaws they were produced adequate products. The one thing that I don't ever remember S3 being was groundbreaking. Others in the industry were creating groundbreaking products while they were busy merging with Diamond Multimedia. Now if two companies EVER deserved each other, THERE they are.

I predict that just about anything S3 comes up with will be greeted by little more than a handful of half-hearted yawns.

 

[ADxS]

The S3 911 was a revolutionary product.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
The Savage design, for a lack of a better term, has been pathetic for its entire lifetime. The Savage 3D worked well enough(it had bad drivers, and the card only had 8MB of RAM, but the core rendering components were good), but the minute that anyone tried to add/tweek anything on the core, it all went downhill. The S4 managed to marginally bust a few things, and the changes made for the S2K absolutely trashed the core as a whole with a non-functional T&L unit. I know this won't happen any time soon, but S3 needs to head back to the drawing board, and design a core from the ground up. If they lay a solid base for themselves, they can easily compete with the Trident XP4, and even break in to the GF4 MX / Raedon 9000 segment. Heck, who knows, if S3 really put itself to the task, I think they are the 3rd best company behind Nvidia and ATI to really move to the high-end(S3 already has some Z sorting techniques; I don't expect Matrox to develop the tech any time soon).

Agreed again, and this is why I'm interested in the Zeotrope (SavageXP) core. If this proves to be a stable and reliable Geforce2 class product, then it would be the building block S3 needs to move to Columbia (Geforce3/4 class) hardware.

The problems are...

1) They are now way behind.
2) They had to respin their "basic building block" to get it right.
3) Who knows if they have any working TnL.

The savage2000 core was a complete failure. It's well known that TnL was never implimented, but my suspicions are that the Savage2000 didn't even have a real TnL engine. I suspect that it was just enough hardware to support the features and the rest was done in software. FSAA and Anisotropic never showed up either. S3 has a huge task ahead of them to get back into the "fight".

But, as your resident S3 fanboy , I will continue to research this and provide as many details as possible. Consider me the "Electric Amish" of the Zeotrope

 

[ViRGE]

merlocka, for all its worth, while they didn't get ansiotropic filtering, they did get trilinear. The Savage 2000 could do trillinear filtering without taking a performance hit(don't ask me how, I've just seen it, and it works:Q), which was a big thing "back in the day", when even trilinear was too much for video cards.

As for innovation, S3 was indeed innovative when it came to 3D. Anyone remember S3TC/DXTC? That was released with the Savage 3D, and they spent the next 2 years trying to convince people to use it, against all the backlash. Now name a game that doesn't use it; it's a cornerstone of modern games. In some respects too, you could call the ViRGE(325) innovative. While the market became full of early 3D cards, the ViRGE was the first or second consumer-class card to come out that did 3D. Obviously, that was a big thing, although overshadowed sometime later with the Voodoo.

 

[merlocka]

The Savage 2000 could do trillinear filtering without taking a performance hit(don't ask me how, I've just seen it, and it works),

The Savage2000 could do Trilinear + Single texture with no performance hit but with dual-texture it did a trilinear approximation which looked just like bilinear.

Anyone remember S3TC/DXTC? That was released with the Savage 3D, and they spent the next 2 years trying to convince people to use it, against all the backlash.

Agreed. And Unreal using the Metal API looked amazing with the high detail textures. S3 could do it long before anyone else... I still remember picking up a Savage2000 when they came out. I so wanted to keep it but it so sucked in anything other than Quake3 or Unreal Tournament...

Heck, the reason I'm a S3 fanboy is that my very first 3D PC gaming experiance was when I downloaded the S3 patch for Tombraider and got to see Lara Croft in her 3D goodness on my rockin Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro 4MB. In the spirit of competition, I hope I can soon buy a S3 card again and not be dissapointed.